As we approach July 1 and a new fiscal and school year, we’re seeing the same themes surface across the organizations Edgility Talent Partners supports: enrollment feels less predictable than it once did, one‑time funds and grants are rolling off, general funds are under increasing pressure, and every staffing and compensation decision carries visible, long‑term ripple effects for both people and sustainability.
That mix of uncertainty and urgency is exactly why now is the time to talk openly about restructuring—before you’re forced into crisis decisions.
In our recent “Restructure Ripple” webinar with Charter Impact and Innovation Montessori, we brought together a finance leader, a sitting Executive Director, and my perspective as a talent and compensation advisor to talk candidly about what really happens when you have to restructure, and how to do it in a way that is financially responsible and deeply human.
Below are five takeaways that resonated most with school and nonprofit leaders who joined us, and why you may want to watch the full conversation with your leadership team.
Table of contents
1. When Rapid Growth Exposes Hidden Risk
2. Staffing is Where Flexibility Lives, and Where Equity Risk Shows Up
3. Roles That Made Sense Then—But Strain Your Budget Now
4. How You Communicate Change Will Shape Who Stays
5. Compensation Decisions Need a Framework, Not One‑Off Heroics
6. Watch the Full Conversation and Assess Your Own “Ripple”
1. When rapid growth exposes hidden risk
When Executive Director Heather Clay stepped into her role at Innovation Montessori in 2023, she didn’t inherit a steady‑state organization—she stepped into the middle of a major restructure.
The founding Executive Director was retiring, the finance director who had handled operations, finance, and HR had just left, and the school had recently opened a new high school, taken on a bond with cash‑on‑hand covenants, and merged its charters into a single organization
As Heather “pulled back the curtain,” she discovered just how fragile things were:
- The school was out of compliance with its bond requirements. As she dug in, she realized they had only eight days of cash on hand and no clear way to make payroll.
- Basic systems were missing—no credit card, reliance on a debit card for spending, no purchase order process, and no real infrastructure for finance or HR.
- ESSER funds had been overspent, and people hired on ESSER didn’t realize their roles were grant‑funded, which meant expectations about job security didn’t match the underlying budget reality.
- Coming from another state and a district environment, she was learning Florida regulations and charter operations at the same time she was stabilizing the organization.
Her outgoing finance director summed it up starkly: “I hope you make it to October, but probably by winter break, it’s over.”
Heather’s takeaway for other leaders is simple and sobering: what looks like “normal” growth from the outside can hide serious financial and systems risk. You only see the full picture when you look underneath—at covenants, cash, systems, and the people whose livelihoods are tied to those numbers—and are willing to ask for help early to start peeling back the layers and plan next steps.
2. Staffing is where flexibility lives—and where equity risk shows up
From a finance perspective, Dana Vignale of Charter Impact reminded us that most charter schools don’t close because of academics; they close because of financial problems.
And in almost every charter budget, two line items dominate: facilities and staffing.
- Facilities costs are largely fixed: the lease or mortgage, utilities, and building costs don’t shrink when enrollment dips.
- Staffing is variable—and therefore where leaders almost always have to look when they need to rebalance the budget.
That reality can feel at odds with how much you value your people. But pretending it isn’t true pushes hard decisions further down the road, often making them more painful and less equitable when they finally arrive. This is also where compensation inequities tend to surface.
We see what many organizations eventually find: no consistent salary scale, one‑off negotiations piled up over many years, and people in essentially the same role earning very different salaries, with no clear explanation or shared framework to guide those decisions.
Beyond naming where flexibility sits in the budget, Dana also urged leaders to avoid “staffing on optimism.” Instead of hiring for aspirational enrollment and hoped‑for grants, she advised staffing to confirmed students and funding, using grant‑funded roles carefully and transparently, and modeling the true three‑year cost of each position—including benefits and payroll taxes—before adding it to the organization.
In the webinar, we explore how a transparent salary structure can serve both purposes: giving boards and leaders a clearer financial picture and giving staff a more consistent, equity‑aligned foundation for pay decisions.
3. Roles that made sense then—but strain your budget now
In the session, Dana spent time on what we call “legacy positions” – roles that made sense when they were first created but, over time, no longer match your current enrollment, programs, or funding model.
These roles often show up as:
- Roles built around a particular person’s strengths rather than a durable organizational need.
- Grant‑funded positions that quietly migrated into the general fund when grants ended.
- Duplicated functions or ratios that were appropriate at 600 students, but never scaled down when enrollment dropped.
We use the term “legacy” intentionally because it honors that these roles had a legitimate origin, and it shifts the conversation away from blame and toward a more honest question: “Given our mission, our students, and our financial reality today, does this role still belong in our structure?”
This “legacy positions” lens from Dana’s finance perspective sits alongside the six‑step staffing model process I share—together, they give leaders a way to move from simply cutting roles to deliberately designing the workforce they need now and in the coming years.
4. How you communicate change will shape who stays
Even the most elegant staffing model can damage trust if the way you communicate and implement it treats people as positions rather than as humans.
During the webinar, we named several pitfalls that we see again and again:
- Overly vague language that leans on jargon like “optimization” and “right‑sizing” instead of clear, plain talk about what’s changing and why.
- Announcing changes to managers and staff at the same time, leaving managers with no space to process or prepare.
- Allowing weeks to pass between “change is coming” and “here’s what it means for you,” which fuels anxiety and rumors.
- Piling all the work from eliminated roles onto “survivors” without re‑prioritizing, leading to burnout and a second wave of departures.
We also shared practices that help keep people engaged, even when the news is hard:
- Briefing managers first and equipping them with FAQs and talking points.
- Moving quickly to clarify individual impact and timelines.
- Using listening sessions, pulse surveys, and informal feedback loops to understand what staff are experiencing and adjust accordingly.
- Offering real transition support, references, introductions, and time to plan—for staff whose roles are changing or ending.
The full session includes specific language you can adapt and examples of how Heather and her team communicated through each phase of their restructure.
5. Compensation decisions need a framework, not one‑off heroics
When we polled participants during the webinar, what felt hardest heading into next year, the top answer was clear: “Compensation—staying competitive without breaking the budget.”
That’s the balance Edgility Talent Partners focuses on every day:
- Internal equity
- External competitiveness
- Legal and regulatory compliance
- Organizational fiscal responsibility and sustainability
In the Restructure Ripple conversation, we talked about several questions leaders should answer before they make individual compensation decisions in a restructure:
- Does your current structure have the right job levels and job families for the organization you are today, not the one you were five years ago?
- Do you need to recalibrate your market target (for example, from the 60th to the 50th percentile) to remain sustainable?
- How will you recognize additional responsibilities for staff who stay through promotions, stipends, bonuses, or a defined additional‑work policy?
- Which roles are truly mission‑critical in this moment, and how will that show up in your compensation and retention strategy?
- For staff who are transitioning out, what will severance, benefits, and timeline look like—and how will you apply those decisions consistently?
What leaders tell us they value most is not a perfect formula but a transparent framework they can stand behind before their board, team, and community.
Watch the full conversation and assess your own “ripple”
If you’re preparing for difficult decisions about roles, structure, or compensation, don’t do it in isolation.
Watch the full “Restructure Ripple” webinar to hear directly from Innovation Montessori’s Executive Director, Charter Impact’s finance leader, and Edgility Talent Partners on how they navigated these choices in real time.
As a next step, you can also use Edgility Talent Partners’ free Diagnostic Survey to get a quick read on where your people systems are strong and where they may be increasing your restructuring risk.
Use the webinar and the diagnostic together with your leadership team as a starting point for one shared conversation: What do we want the ripple effects of this year’s decisions to be—for our staff, our students, and our long‑term sustainability?
